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Evidence published over the past decade shows that omega-3s from fish and antioxidant-rich fruits and veggies help deter metabolic problems, while key characteristics of the standard American diet make matters worse.

Insulin resistance (glucose intolerance or pre-diabetes), in which the body can’t properly use insulin or blood sugar

Now, a clinical study is the first to find that highly stressed people (women) who eat a lot of high-fat, high-sugar food are more prone to MetS than low-stress peers who eat a similar diet.

California study sees stress adding to the impact of poor diets

The new study comes from the University of California San Francisco, where a team led by Kirstin Aschbacher, Ph.D., recruited 61 disease-free women.

“Chronic stress can play an important role in influencing biology, and it's critical to understand the exact pathways through which it works,” said Aschbacher.

The volunteers included 33 women who were chronically stressed from caring for a spouse or parent with dementia, and 28 with low stress levels (Aschbacher K et al. 2014).

Over the course of a year, the women reported on their consumption of high-sugar, high-fat foods.

At the outset, the researchers examined the women for key metabolic problems:

Waistline size

Stress hormones

Oxidative damage to blood fats

Insulin resistance (a key driver of obesity and diabetes)

Body fat distribution, including deep abdominal fat deposits

Oxidative damage to cellular RNA, which predicts faster aging and higher rates of death from diabetes

As Dr. Aschbacher said, “We found that more frequent high fat, high sugar consumption significantly predicted a larger waistline, more truncal [abdominal] fat, higher oxidative damage, and more insulin resistance, but only among the group of women exposed to chronic stress.”

“The chronically stressed women didn't report eating more high-sugar, high-fat foods than the low stressed women; however, they did have higher levels of a stress-related biomarker, peripheral Neuropeptide Y (NPY),” she added.

Animal studies show that stress triggers release of peripheral NPY which, in combination with junk food, creates larger abdominal fat cells, which are more prone to metabolic dysfunctions.

Professor Aschbacher made an important point: “Many people think a calorie is a calorie, but this study suggests that two women who eat the same thing could have different metabolic responses based on their level of stress. There appears to be a stress pathway that works through diet.”

“The medical community is starting to appreciate how important chronic stress is in promoting and worsening early disease processes,” said Aschbacher.

“But there are no guidelines for ‘treating’ chronic stress. We need treatment studies to understand whether increasing stress resilience could reduce the metabolic syndrome, obesity or diabetes.”